Today's Special is Cuy

We ended up in Nazca around lunchtime and we didn't fancy more driving so we found a garage to install our new ball joints. The only way to get the old ones out was with a massive lump hammer, and then the new ones were half a milametre too big. Normally this would mean a big hassle, but here we drove to the nearest torno who shaved them down for us and an hour later they fitted like a glove. Unfortunately our test drive didn't go so well with Elvis handling like he'd had one too many of his special pills. After about another half a dozen attempts to get the alignment right we called it a night, and spent yet another night in the mechanics yard. To be honest this is not as bad as it sounds - it's always very secure, away from street noise, has bathrooms and sometimes showers, plus it's free! A new day brought a different perspective and within an hour Elvis was back to his old personality and we were back on the road.

We had a loooong way to go to get to Cusco, the next big destination, so we spent the rest of the day driving. We climbed from near sea level to over 4,000m and then cruised through the amazing high altitude landscape. We spent the night on the edge of a small town, and had to get the duvet (plus blankets) out for the first time in a few weeks.

The following day we drove another 4 hours, losing over half our altitude, and found a beautiful place to stop with a large swimming pool. We were planning on organising ourselves and doing some shopping, but the weather was so gorgeous we couldn't do anything else other than laze around the pool.

The next day was a bit drizzly so we definitely made the right decision. We headed into town we grabbed some lunch. I'd been hankering after cuy (guinea pig) but again I was disappointed - it tastes a little bit like chicken and has hardly any meat - this one even came with head and claws with made it even less appealing. We then stocked up for our impending massive hike...Read more